


break my own heart before you can

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, F/F, First Kiss, Growing Up Butch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 02:08:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10561620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Alone in the locker room, Mako and Furiosa stare at each other as she finishes rolling her socks up to her calves.“Let’s go.” Furiosa leads the way out, a hand passing over her buzz-cut hair with a susurrus.They want to treat her like a leper. Furiosa walks like they couldn’t touch her if they tried.au where mako and furiosa grow up together, set in a mundane universe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from ["heart's content"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50S9X7TlbUk) by brandi carlile.
> 
> so i found this wip from november 2015 while i was gearing up to write something else pacrim, and i decided to dust it off, finish it up, and publish. pretty personal in a lot of ways--hope there's something for other people to enjoy, too!
> 
> background valkyrie/mary jo bassa, cheedo/dag. 
> 
> **warnings** for lesbophobia, ableism, classism.

“Furiosa? Do we have a Furiosa here with us today?” Mako’s teacher claps her hands together in delight when a girl finally pushes to the front of the knot of milling kindergarteners.

There’s a ripple of giggles at the name and at the girl. 

She’s glaring at the teacher, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and her cheek smudged with something. When she reaches out for her nametag, she receives it with an even deeper scowl. 

This, Mako gets. She’d have taken one of the boys’ blue name-tags patterned with trucks over the pink patterned with tiaras that the teacher gives the girls. But she didn’t have to be so grumpy when everyone else was so excited. 

Mako is at least nice enough to hide the fact that she’s staring, bending to pull her crayons out of her bag while Furiosa sits down a seat to the left of her. 

 

Mako is just as excited by recess, though she’s quieter than the rest of them. 

She’s enjoyed the coloring, the book the teacher read to them, and she loves that she has her own cubby-hole, the best spot, right in the corner by the big window. 

Out on the playground, she hovers at the edge of the sand-pit, where a couple of boys are playing with trucks, and debates whether it’s worth getting her new shiny red shoes all muddy. 

As she’s trying to decide, that girl Furiosa runs right past her and sits right down in the rain-damp sand. She casts around for the biggest shovel there is and starts digging away with one hand. It’s only then that Mako notices. 

She only has one whole arm. 

She’s bearing down on the shovel with the other, which ends halfway down. And she’s making good progress, digging a wide, shallow ditch. 

Eventually, the boys get annoyed by the sand spraying onto them and climb out to play elsewhere. 

Mako finally makes her decision. She toes off her shoes, peels off her lacy socks, and joins her.  
They dig together and line the ditch with wood-chips, making the rubber dinosaurs they find in another corner of the pit jump over it or get stuck full of spikes.  
It’s the most fun Mako has all day.

 

Mako loves museums. Her dad takes her all the time. 

Furiosa, though, has never been before today. 

To Mako’s disappointment, she also doesn’t seem very interested in their class field trip. 

While their guide is telling them all about the first American colonists, Furiosa is busy trying to color her pink name-tag--they got special ones for the museum, though after four months of school, their teacher definitely knows their names--black. 

“Furiosa,” she whispers. “You have to pay attention.” She’s actually good at whispering, unlike the other kids, who keep getting shushed because when they whisper they’re as loud as when they talk, just more hissy. 

When Furiosa persists, she tugs on her arm, making her streak black marker over her--black shirt. 

Satisfied that she hasn’t done any damage, Mako sticks her hand in Furiosa’s and squeezes until she turns to face the front with the rest of them. 

 

“I told you museums were cool,” she says triumphantly to Furiosa as she hops in the window seat of the bus.

“I liked the cannons,” Furiosa mutters. “Now move over. I get the window seat this time, remember?”

Mako dutifully switches seats with her. “What about the dinosaurs?” she prompts, eager. She doesn’t even know if she’ll get an answer--Mako may be quiet, but Furiosa talks maybe twice a day.

Furiosa is silent, and she’s given up on an answer when she says at last, “They would have been cooler if they had cannons.”

Huffing, Mako crosses her arms. She’ll have to wait til she’s home with Dad to tell him all about the new Apatosaurus exhibit at the museum. 

And next time they play pretend, she’s determined to convince Furiosa that the sand-pit T. rex can’t have a machine gun, even if it’s imaginary.

 

“The whole summer?” Furiosa demands. Her mouth is down-turned at the corners.

“I’ll be back two weeks before school,” Mako promises. 

“I don’t even want to think about middle school.” She chucks a rock out onto the street moodily.

“What are you gonna do while I’m in Japan?” she asks, lacing her arm under Furiosa’s, feeling the familiar shape of it. Furiosa uses her arm as naturally as Mako does her own--she’s never known anything else, hadn’t been in some accident like everyone assumed. 

Mako researched fetal amputees with her dad after Furiosa told her about it, but it’s not something they talk about because to Furiosa, it doesn’t matter. 

“Soccer camp, maybe. Depends on whether Val is working.” 

Mako and Furiosa play soccer with Furiosa’s neighbors’ kids a lot, setting up makeshift goals at the end of the cul-de-sac and in front of Furiosa’s house. 

Furiosa is really, really good, fast and smart. Mako has a strong kick, which she chalks up to her martial arts training. 

Unfortunately, their abilities make the rest of the kids decide they can never be on the same team, or it isn’t fair.

“You don’t need soccer camp to beat me,” Mako tells her.

That gets a laugh, a shake of the head.

“But I know you’ll love it. You should go.”

“We’ll see.” Furiosa picks up another sun-hot rock and moves it from hand to hand. “Bring me back pictures. And a souvenir.”

Mako leans her head against her wiry shoulder. “You bet. Best friends forever, right?”

“Best friends forever,” Furiosa echoes. “Even when you leave me by myself for a whole summer.”

“When I grow up and move to Japan, I’ll take you with me,” Mako promises. 

They’ve always said they’re going to live together when they grow up, which makes Furiosa’s mothers exchange smiles and Mako’s dad ruffle their hair until they protest.

“You better.” They laze in the sun until the ice cream truck trundles by on the opposite street, and Furiosa grabs Mako’s arm to chase it down with her.

 

Mako smiles at Val and Mary before ducking behind her dad, looking around for Furiosa. 

She’s surprised she’s not with her parents at Open House. She only half-listens to the conversation between them.

“It’s good to see both of you,” her dad says.

“We nearly flipped a coin,” Val admits, “but then we remembered being in high school ourselves, how scary it seemed--decided, what the hell, we’d both show. Anyway, not a well-kept secret…”

“...a brave kid. She won’t take anything lying down.”

Mary’s soft chuckle. “That’s why we worry. Maybe we should start wrapping her knuckles. Our sprout…”

Mako gasps as she spots her elbowing through the crowd. She’s cut her wild tangle of hair down into something boyish and floppy over her tanned face. “Your hair!” 

“Like it?” she asks as she produces her class schedule to compare.

“Now you don’t even have to pretend to brush it. I was thinking of dyeing mine, only it’s against dress code.”

Furiosa looks thoughtful. “Dye it blue.”

 

“I wanted to show you before I showed anyone else.” As they’re standing at the doorstep of one of Mako’s friends, waiting for her to come to the door, Mako lifts up her curtain of black hair to show that she’s dyed just the usually-invisible underside blue.

“Chicken,” Furiosa says, cluck-clucking over her indignation. She still has her arm bent like a wing, the other flapping with it, when the door opens. 

“Bawk,” she says baldly. 

Mako can just see their host, Alice, and the two girls behind her judging Furiosa.

Concealing a wince, Mako walks forward first to drop her sleeping bag on the squishy pile on the couch. “Thanks for inviting us,” she says politely, diffusing some of the awkwardness and bringing a more pleasant expression to Alice’s face.

“You want snacks? And then you can change into your pajamas!” She bounces into the kitchen and Mako and Furiosa follow.

The evening goes downhill from there.

Alice had known to invite Furiosa to the slumber party or else Mako wouldn’t come, but Mako wishes now that she’d given into Furiosa’s reluctance and not begged her to tag along. 

Mako comes out in a blue shirt and white sleep-shorts patterned with little birds--Furiosa is in boxers and a too-big tie-dye shirt, probably Mary’s. 

The girls are picking between _The Princess Diaries_ or _High School Musical._

Furiosa lurks in the background and when the credits roll, Mako finds her asleep against the back of the couch. 

The worst isn’t until much later, so late Mako’s eyelids feel heavy, since she usually goes to sleep early (she wakes up extra early every morning so Dad can drive her to school before he goes to work, and sometimes she gets to school even before her homeroom teacher). 

It’s only Furiosa’s thin, tense body pressed against her side that keeps her up as the girls sit in a circle.

“Let’s play Truth or Dare!” All the girls pick “Truth.” The game is plainly an excuse to talk about boys for most. 

When Mako picks “Truth” the first round, though, a girl who sits behind her in the class asks her, “What’s the lowest grade you’ve ever gotten on a math test?”

“94,” Mako confesses after a moment of embarrassment. “I didn’t really study…” 

This brings up the question of how the heck one studies for math tests, anyway, and jibing about Mako’s studiousness, which she doesn’t really mind. For a few minutes, it’s back into comfortable territory for Mako, and even Furiosa unwinds a little.

“Okay, okay…” Alice has picked “Dare,” the first to do so, and the girls conspire before prompting her. “Go try on your mom’s makeup!”  
Furiosa is so desperately bored by this that she insists on leading the expedition upstairs. She holds a finger to her lips as she creeps around the corner, picking light steps down the corridor and opening the door sneakily. 

Mako darts through the door and manages to steal an eyeshadow palette, two tubes of lipstick, and a compact. Skills learned from hide-and-go-seek-tag in elementary school, obviously.

The girls are so impressed by their teamwork that the asker doesn’t even complain that Alice was supposed to retrieve the makeup herself.

“That’s why we’re best friends,” Mako murmurs close to Furiosa’s ear.

She smiles back, to Mako’s relief. The smile doesn’t last for long.

“Furiosa! Truth or dare?” Alice asks.

Apparently guessing what “Dare” would get her with how the girls have been wheedling her to let them put lipstick on her, Furiosa wrinkles her nose and says, “Truth.”

“Who do you like?” Alice leans forward.

Furiosa stares. “Uh.” Her eyes dart sideways at Mako. She might as well have shouted _“Save me.”_

“What about Chuck?”

“Chuck?” Furiosa repeats flatly. Chuck Hansen lives up the street from them, plays soccer on Furiosa’s team sometimes. He’s two years older and blond, which Mako has determined are sufficient criteria for these girls to be obsessed with him. 

“He’s so cute. You like him, don’t you?”

Furiosa snorts. “No.” 

“Noo, you do like him!” the girls insist. “You have to tell the truth.”

“I am.”

“You like him.”

“I don’t.”

“Stop it,” Mako says firmly, to their surprise. She’s not timid, but she has a reputation for it nevertheless. “Whose turn is it next?”

Furiosa’s arm bumps into hers, soft and grateful. Mako is lost in thought for the rest of the game, wondering about her friend. 

Her responses didn’t have the heat of denial, and when she looked at her face, Furiosa didn’t look flustered. She looked lost.

“We’re never doing that again,” Furiosa says fervently as they hop down the steps, the first to leave the next morning. They climb in Mary’s car and wrestle with the ancient, stiff seatbelts, and it’s cramped with all their stuff here, too.

“How was it, sprout?” Mary asks, looking back at them through the rear-view mirror.

“No.”

“No?” Val asks, puzzled.

Mako agrees. “No.”

“Awful,” Furiosa mutters. 

“Bawk,” Mako adds, catching her eye. They dissolve into laughter.

 

“Coach wants me to wear my prosthetic for balance,” Furiosa is telling her as they make their way to the locker room after school.

“What do Val and Mary say?” Mako takes a few more steps to match her. At fifteen, Furiosa’s so leggy that Mary has upgraded her from “sprout” to “bean-stalk.” 

“Val wants me to wear it,” she sighs. “Ma doesn’t care.” She opens the door for Mako, her voice low and private as she continues, “I know they spent a lot of money on it, it’s just--”

She closes her mouth and lifts her eyebrows coolly. What looks like the entire girls’ varsity tennis team is staring at them. One hastily covers her chest with the top she’d just removed. A few more cough, clear their throats, turn their backs.

Mako hears them whisper when Furiosa lopes by in her combat boots. She moves with purpose to strip off her t-shirt. Fixes her eyes on her bag as she leans over to search for her soccer jersey.

Mako knows what she looks like without much on, obviously. After how long they’ve known each other, it would be a bizarre boundary to uphold. 

And up until seventh grade, Furiosa used to swim topless in boys’ board shorts.

Her breasts are small in her sports bra, her belly below it flat and tight, barely creasing as she bends. 

Mako is momentarily mesmerized by the lean curve of her waist.

Catching herself with a dim sense of rudeness, Mako hastens to stare at her flats, pulling her cardigan closed, self-conscious in a way confident Furiosa never seems to feel.

Her head snaps up when she sees the tennis team file by, bathroom doors opening and closing; they’ve retreated to change like Furiosa has some disease.

Alone in the locker room, Mako and Furiosa stare at each other as she finishes rolling her socks up to her calves.

“Let’s go.” Furiosa leads the way out, a hand passing over her buzz-cut hair with a susurrus. 

They want to treat her like a leper. Furiosa walks like they couldn’t touch her if they tried.

Mako glances back into the locker room to see a girl whose name she can’t remember waving at her, trying for a little smile.

She doesn’t return it. 

Instead, Mako falls into step with Furiosa, a fierce, fond pride igniting behind her ribs.

 

Mako goes to every one of Furiosa’s JV soccer home games and her away games as well if she can manage to get away from robotics club and orchestra and swimming long enough to do so. 

She pulls out her homework so often up in the bleachers that she’s set up a kind of tutoring corner. Between reworking calculus problems, she watches Furiosa’s fleet feet. Whenever she scores a goal, the whole group of students cheers, Mako the loudest. 

Furiosa shakes her head when Mako gets an art kid to paint a massive banner, calls her a future soccer mom without a hint of derision.

It’s not like Furiosa needs Mako to find her supporters, though. 

Right into ninth grade, Furiosa amasses a very strange but very close group of friends.

First comes Angharad, cheer captain and belligerent feminist (Mako refrains from asking how that works). 

Then there’s Capable, Merida before Merida was Merida--she has thick, curly red hair and never grew out of her horse phase, good enough to compete in dressage out of state. 

Dag is dreamy and perceptive and on a texting basis with Furiosa’s grandmother. 

Cheedo is a musical theater kid, a surprisingly gifted actress with an angel’s voice; the second she steps off the stage, she turns shrinkingly shy. 

Toast joins the group two years later, sharp-tongued and street-smart in a way that Mako gathers reminds Furiosa of herself.

Furiosa, unfeminine as she is, has nevertheless always preferred female friends. 

Among her usual group, there are just two boys. 

There’s Nux, known largely for having leukemia and souping up cars. 

And closest to Furiosa after Mako is Max Rockatansky, who doesn’t talk about his difficult childhood or much of anything, really. According to Furiosa, he rakes in a lot of cash dog-walking after school.

There remains, though, the rest of the school. They don’t seem to know what to do with Furiosa. 

Could be her buzzed hair and her loose boys’ clothes in this conservative town. Could be her arm. Both possibilities anger Mako.

People whisper rumors, shoot her furtive looks. 

Forget the tennis team’s disdain--Furiosa’s own soccer team works well with her as a unit on the field, but once they’ve changed back into jeans, they resume their mutual pact not to give each other even the time of day. 

So yes, with a few notable exceptions, most people give Furiosa a wide berth.

They don’t know what they’re missing.

 

Toast comes into high school with wavy brown hair nearly to her hips. 

Within a month of meeting Furiosa, she demands her help in cutting it.

“I’ve never cut hair,” Furiosa tells her as she lets the first wet chunk fall into her cracked sink.

Mako, perched on the counter, looks wide-eyed at Toast. “Was that in the contract?”

“It’s the fun part.” Toast’s eyes crinkle in the mirror, and Furiosa’s mouth turns up at the corner. “My parents are gonna hate this so much,” she adds, gleeful.

“She trusts me to know what I’m doing,” Furiosa explains to Mako seriously, her other arm swinging around to rest on Toast’s shoulder as she leans against her back and snips off another long piece.

“You only look competent.” Mako smiles at her, the tease warm.

Furiosa doesn’t reciprocate, too focused on her task. 

Mako sees the ill-concealed adoration in Toast’s face, sees Furiosa brushing away the tiny bits of hair from her soft neck with uncommon gentleness. 

Her stomach twinges hard, and she doesn’t speak again, not even when it’s done and Toast breathes, “I love it” until Furiosa’s cheeks pink.

 

“It’s senior year. You won’t even go to prom once?” Cheedo looks up imploringly at Furiosa.

While Furiosa is distracted, Mako pilfers her chocolate milk. She doesn’t know how she can resist Cheedo’s face, she really doesn't.

“If Angharad couldn’t get me to go before she graduated, what makes you think you can?” Furiosa leans back languidly as far as the crappy cafeteria seating will allow, that smirk that Mako can’t look at for too long stealing across her face.

“Please?” Cheedo puts her hands together, eyes wide.

Furiosa snorts. “Just ask Dag already.”

Cheedo’s eyes widen. “That’s not--I don’t--” Blushing redder than Mako thought she could get with her skin tone, she gathers up her tray and mumbles something about needing to rehearse for the big ensemble dance scene before she flees.

“Good one, Cupid.” Mako snaps Furiosa’s bracelet against her wrist.

Furiosa turns that smirk on her. “Max and I are going to get them together before we graduate.”

“So they’re--?” The word sticks in her throat. 

“Gay?” Furiosa offers up to her. “Who isn’t these days?”

Mako stares at Furiosa’s profile. Intense, clear eyes. Soft mouth. Short hair. Mako’s thumb grazes her skin before her hand shies away. 

And she wonders.

 

“You look like one of those medieval horses.” Furiosa tugs at the silky tangle over Mako’s graduation robes where she has a single cord and one shiny soccer pin.

It’s a little _mean._

Mako looks away, uncomfortable.

They’ve always been from different places. They’ve always been going different places. But it never mattered before as much as it does today. Graduation. 

Mako’s headed off to college across the country. Furiosa’s staying here. She says she’s going to work in her mothers’ auto repair shop for a couple years and then think about options later. Mako tries hard not to see that as a dead end, just another kind of transition.

The weight of the mass of cords drops back onto Mako’s shoulders. Fingers in her hair. “Hey,” she says, quiet but not hesitant. “I’m sorry.”

In Mako’s experiences, Furiosa is not _apologetic._ But she is sincere.

Looking up, she nods. She reaches out and takes both of Furiosa’s hands like she did when they were little girls, squeezing tight. 

Furiosa pulls her into a hug instead, strong arms wrapping around her, face in her hair. “You’re leaving.” 

She’s been busy not acknowledging it these past months, spending more time with Max, who’s working with her in the shop, and Toast, who still has two years left. Mako thinks she’s apologizing for a lot.

“We still have the summer,” Mako reasons, shrugging. “And I’ll visit.”

Furiosa’s mouth twists, one shoulder lifting. “You’ll _visit._ Home’s going to be somewhere else.”

Standing up on her toes, Mako winds her arms around Furiosa’s breath and hugs her back tight enough that neither of them can really breathe. “No.”

“No?” Furiosa’s fingers curl into her back. A huff, half a laugh.

Mako finds her voice because of Furiosa, as she always has, and she whispers back, “No.”

 

“Ma wants venison this year.” Furiosa swings Mako’s bags out of the back of the car and slams it closed again with a _oof._

“A deer?” Mako repeats, incredulous, fiddling with the purse over her shoulder. It’s unseasonably sunny, and her skin burns under all the black she’s wearing.

“Don’t tell me you’re vegetarian now,” Furiosa scoffs. “And you said college wouldn’t change you.”

Mako makes a face at her. “I’m not eating Bambi.”

“ _You’re_ Bambi.” Furiosa reaches up and touches the edge of the streak in Mako’s hair, blue again.

Rolling her eyes, Mako checks her phone for GroupMe messages about their project. She knows she should be relaxing over Thanksgiving break, but it’s too close to finals for comfort.

“Boyfriend?” There’s something strange in Furiosa’s face, and she nods at Mako’s phone.

Mako blinks and shakes her head, pocketing it. “Girlfriend?” she shoots back.

Furiosa’s face shifts. Like Mako didn’t know. 

Not--not that they ever _really_ talked about it. Or Mako gave her a sign that she _could_ talk to her about it. Of course Val and Mary, of course Cheedo and Dag, but maybe Furiosa thought she herself was too close to home for Mako.

“Are you asking?” Furiosa smirks that _smirk_ and leans in and doesn’t stop.

At the last second, Mako turns her head. 

Velvet lips graze the corner of her mouth instead.

And now Furiosa’s pulling back. And now Furiosa’s looking down.

First into the sandbox, last out of the locker room, and Furiosa never hangs her head. Not like Mako.

No, Mako thinks to herself.

Cupping Furiosa’s face in both her hands, Mako kisses her mouth before Furiosa can smirk and she can lose her nerve. “Yes.”

She couldn’t say how long they kissed, her arithmetic ability defeated. Furiosa’s hot against her front, and Mako’s warm everywhere.

Valedictorian or not, Mako couldn’t be more of an idiot.

When she pulls back and turns towards Furiosa’s house, she’s greeted by three wide grins.

Groaning in the back of her throat, Mako lets Furiosa lead them, head held high, up to their parents, who are never going to let this one go.

She holds her hand under the dinner table (where they do not dine on Disney creatures), and she kisses her again after dessert away from _told you so_ eyes, and it’s familiar and exciting at once.

Furiosa colors her life over again just as she has as long as they’ve known each other.


End file.
